Where it was filmed 'Grazie ragazzi'

Grazie ragazzi is inspired by the French film Un Triomphe, which was inspired by the true story of the actor Jan Jonson, who ran a theatre course in 1985 for a group of prisoners in the Komla maximum security prison in Sweden.

At the heart of the Italian version is Antonio (Albanese), a passionate actor who, given his lack of employment, agrees to teach a theatre workshop in a prison. The prisons most used as locations for the film were Rebibbia (interiors) and Velletri (exteriors). Antonio takes the train from Ciampino.

The five inmates involved in the workshop (Andrea Lattanzi, Giacomo Ferrara, Giorgio Montanini, Bogdan Iordachioiu, Vinicio Marchioni) find a new purpose in theatre, discovering the extraordinary liberating power of art. After the unexpected success of the end-of-course show, Antonio manages to convince the prison director (Sonia Bergamasco) to allow them to perform Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot - particularly appropriate to those serving time in prison - in a real theatre.

So begins a tour of different cities: the company goes to Tuscany - to Pisa with its piazza dei Miracoli and leaning tower, and Siena, with a glimpse of piazza del Campo and a performance shot in both the teatro dei Rinnovati and the teatro dei Rozzi - then to Umbria, in particular Amelia (Terni) at the teatro Sociale, and Perugia, recognizable thanks to piazza IV Novembre and the alleys of the historic centre, where they perform at the Zenith cinema-theatre. In Rome, theatres included teatro Garbatella, teatro Ghione, teatro Palladium in addition to the teatro Argentina, setting for the final scenes.

Other filming locations include the wind farm of Collarmele in Marsica (L’Aquila) which stands in for Canada.